The recent shooting deaths of two black men has created more tension between African-Americans and law enforcement. And now many wonder if the officers at the center of this will be held accountable. KRCU’s Marissanne Lewis-Thompson spoke with Dr. Jeremy Ball, the department chair for the Criminal Justice and Sociology department at SEMO to discuss the way we look at Justice in America.
Lewis-Thompson: Something that continues to come up no matter what incident it is the concept of "justice." We hear phrases like "no justice, no peace" or justice for x,y,z. Is justice something that is attainable in today's society?
Ball: I think it depends on your definition of justice. It's one thing we talk about in a lot of my classes. I teach a lot of the law classes--law and justice classes. And I open the conversation of that question of ‘what is justice,’ right? And we get a lot of typical answers of 'ah it's you know just deserts. It's you know punishing those who deserve punishment,' and so on and so forth. But I really challenge them into what about equity. What about due process and how does that serve justice? And so, this concept of justice is very difficult. And so, we go through this conversation in courses and discussions with students, and they have a very hard time working through it. They think they know what the answer is right away, but then when we work through it at the end, they're bewildered. They're confused. They're frustrated. And then I stop and say 'that's okay to be frustrated, because it's a difficult concept to outline.’ If we're talking about justice as in punishing those who deserve punishment through the lens of due process, I think we can. But if we are all on our own islands about what the definition of justice is, if that's where we start, then no we can't ever get to justice.
Lewis-Thompson: But when we look at our legal system is justice attainable then?
Ball: I think so. I think again it depends on one's word of justice. If you have crime control and the one hand that basically assumes you know guilt because in order to control crime you need to get to it fast, and we can't do that--not we--but crime theorists would say we can't get to that efficient [and] preventative level worrying about appeals and individual rights, and making sure we separate with a fine tooth comb really get at these rights. That's crime control. Then on the other hand due process wants to slow everything down, and they want to really understand [and] make sure to the most granular level that due process is being attained. That rights are being protected. That doesn't serve public safety sometimes if you do that. So, what we try to teach in our field and specifically at Southeast is that we want a balance of those two things. And I think if you are nestled right there in the middle of crime control and due process we can prevent crime. We can offer public safety, but we can also understand due process rights as they should be protected. And if we can nestle right there then I think justice can be served in our criminal justice system.
Lewis-Thompson: How do you deliver justice in a courtroom when you have social media proceedings like that occur?
Ball: I don't know [laughs]. I think media--social media especially I think we are running into and again not to discredit the recent occurrence, especially with the Facebook Live, I haven't seen it. But it's hard, because you're trying to get an unbiased jury. Unbiased meaning both ways, right? And certainly we would unbiased on the state's side, because we're talking about someone's life sometimes. We're talking about someone's freedom, and we want to make sure we get it right. And it's hard when you have social media accounts and unaccounted for social media accounts. That's one of the processes of the jury selection process is the voir dire, and so that's the questioning of potential jury members to say what have you heard. And I think more and more you're going to see prosecutors, defense attorneys needing to ask those questions. And how do they do it. I don't know. That would be difficult.
Lewis-Thompson: We have this historical issue as it relates to law enforcement and minorities, more specifically African-Americans in recent years. And there is a loss of trust. And there is fear in trusting those who are supposed to protect you, due to past incidences. Is it too late for those wounds to be healed?
Ball: To a certain extent that's [a] loaded question, because it depends on the perspective. Who's asking that question? If we're talking about the general black community, let's just go there, and of course I also want to recognize that I am a part of the white privilege class. And we always have to understand that the lens that we have, and as long as we can start there then I think we can have these kind of difficult discussions. But if we're talking about the black community, certainly I don't know what it's like to be a black American and have to worry about how I'm being perceived and that type of thing. But I guess I'm an optimist. I think we can get there, but I think we have to have difficult dialogue. We can't just live in our own bubbles--live in our own islands and think everything's good to go. We have to bridge those islands. We have to come together and have the difficult discussions before we can even think. And as part of the white kind of privilege group if you will, I need to recognize the historical issues. I mean we're talking back to the civil rights movement. We're talking about back to slavery and earlier. I mean certainly there is a historical component that we can not ignore. But I think you can flip it on the other side too that just like I shouldn't as a white citizen see, and if I'm a law enforcement even more see a black citizen [and] immediately think x,y, z, right? Black community--a black citizen shouldn't also see me as white individual or white officer in particular, see that as well [and] that's how they've historically treated us this way, so this one individual is going to treat me like this as well. We need to come together and have those conversations. I think right now we're to some extent, I don't think to a great extent, but to some extent, I think we're living in our own bubbles and on our own islands. And until we can come together and have those conversations we're not going to heal. We're not going to get past this if you will.
Lewis-Thompson: Something that has continued to come up when incidences of police brutality occur is that the legal system shows preferential treatment towards police officers, or the 'we protect our own mentality.' Is there truth in that?
Ball: I would like to say no [laughs]... I'm not a law enforcement person to any stretch of the imagination, but I'm more of a court person. So, one of the concepts we talk about is ‘courtroom work group.’ And this idea that people are in, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges they see each other all time. And so, there's not a lot of adversarial work that goes along with that. If you think about just a regular office if you're out in the corporate world and need to write up contracts with you know businesses, I mean you're seeing each other all the time. So, when you write up a contract not a lot of deliberation goes on in there. Obviously the bigger deals [court cases] there probably is. But the kind of day to day dealings with businesses and corporations I mean you're just not, you're not spending a lot of time adversarially working through the deals. And so, same thing with the courtroom whether right or wrong, right? I mean it's the reality. And so, this sense of the power of the state if you will, I think is true. I mean we have to acknowledge that that there is an element of the power of the state. They hold kind of all the cards. The prosecutor in himself or herself is probably got the most discretional authority in our criminal justice system than anybody else. Law enforcement more and more [they] have a magnifying glass watching their every behavior. Judges we have restriction on their discretional authority based on statute and based some kind of sentencing guideline system that they're getting less and less discretion. Prosecutors on the other hand not much control--restrictions. They can charge what they want to charge and if it doesn't stick we'll get a guilty plea. But that's the reality. I'm not suggesting that prosecutors are Satan incarnate, but they are given a lot of discretional authority. And so, when that happens--when you have discretional authority like that you have a lot of power. And that's where the issues with diversity and specifically racial minorities and specifically African-Americans that's the quintessential problem, [which] is that they I'm guessing they feel like they lose power in the justice system. And until we can have open conversations, restrict where we need to restrict discretional authority, I'm not wanting to advocate any strict system where it's this or not all the time. I think discretion allows for some allowance. Just like a professor, there should be a little bit of discretion in our grading like a paper or something. If said, 'well you need this, this, this, this to make an A,' and if they do that, but they don't know how to connect the dots there should be some discretion with that. And so, there's again it's all about balance-- balance between restricting discretional authority and allowing for discretional authority. But too much really has this power differential and so we as a system, we as scholars in the field need to acknowledge that. And that's part of the job I have as an educator is to again live in the middle. It's not pro-state, but it's not also anti-state. It's to kind of talk about what the problems are and how do we reform those problems, but what are the good things about the system as well.
Lewis-Thompson: Well then how can you hold people accountable if there is that kind of for lack of a better word a "clique" mentality happening in the legal system or a court room?
Ball: Money [laughs]. I mean to a certain extent if you think about defense attorneys. Majority of our defendants are lower income and can't afford the private attorney. And when you have a private attorney they could put as much resource as you can pay, pay for as much resources, get expert witnesses, get all this big ole lawyer team to advocate and provide that adversarial side.With a public defense attorney and again no knock on public defense attorneys, it's just the reality is that they're in the system all the time and they know what the going rate is. You know whatever that quote on quote going rate is of what a particular case is worth. And so, they're trying to minimize their expenses and their time, because they have 1,500 other cases to worry about. And so, you have to kind of barter with the prosecutor and it's all about certainty. It's all about for the prosecutor it's about certainty of conviction. We want to get convictions. And there's something that we haven't really touched upon is the whole politics of that whole thing. It's actually a thing that we're talking about in class right now. And so, politics, finances, socioeconomic status and socioeconomic factors are playing into that. And it's hard to kind of meet that out. We would love justice to be justice by itself. But we're in a social world. We're in a sociopolitical world. And so, we have to understand the social part of it as well as the political part of it.
Lewis-Thompson: Have we as a society been overly critical of police officers in a lot of these police brutality cases?
Ball: Time will tell. But I don't think asking the questions is a bad thing.
Lewis-Thompson: What do you mean?
Ball: Asking the question about 'are law enforcement being fair, or are they targeting?' Especially when we were talking about African-Americans. The reaction in Dallas absolutely incomprehensible. To use violence as a response I don't think is ever justified, except for in a case of self-defense. And there might be some that suggest that that is a self-defense in terms of historical violence towards the black community, but I wouldn't condone that at all. But I think the question and having difficult conversations and keeping law enforcement other criminal justice professionals accountable is important. So I don't think it's bad to ask the question. But should they be as a whole deemed as biased or against any particular community I don't know if we can go there yet. I don't know if we can go there. I think they're doing as a whole doing an okay job. But I think it's always important to be critical and to ask those questions.
Lewis-Thompson: How do you see Cape Girardeau as a place of moving forward in the legal system, especially with law enforcement?
Ball: Well not only my experiences with Chief Blair, but also my experiences sitting on the diversity task force, so I'm seeing it from a bit of both sides, you know talking about the black community. They're university specific with students and staff. So, it's not the community community, but we're hearing that there is kind of racial divisions. There's a lack of maybe understanding. But as law enforcement with Chief Blair I think they try to do a good job. And I think they're doing from what I can see a pretty good job in terms of uniting with the black community, uniting with the community as a whole, and trying to build relationships. You know he did the KRCU event in September and he talked about where they hold their roll call in different communities. And they will go into...
Lewis-Thompson: And they're having one tonight too.
Ball: Yeah. Those kinds of things say a lot to me, because it opens the doors to law enforcement [and] those who are manager level in law enforcement. That says a lot to building those relationships. And if you build those relationships then community policing can bridge the gap between the perceived disconnection between law enforcement and particular communities like the black community. And so, if we can continue to do that, and continue [to] hold conversations and difficult conversation I think we're on the right path. But we don't want to get complacent, and just say 'oh okay that's good enough.' No let's still be critical. We need to critique the state. That's the beauty of how our government was formed. As we did critique the state we did say hey didn't want a monarchy, and that's where we started from. That's how we started this country. We didn't want this strong government power. We wanted private citizens, states rights to balance that strong government power. And that's why we have checks and balances and all that good stuff. And so having Chief Blair and his folks do things like getting out into the community and doing roll calls that's what's important.
